From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff Tue Nov 26 12:31:29 EST 1991
Article 1498 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Xref: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca rec.arts.books:10446 sci.philosophy.tech:1058 comp.ai.philosophy:1498
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff
>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Language & Logic
Message-ID: <5677@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 22 Nov 91 18:16:16 GMT
References: <1991Nov15 .003438.11323@grebyn.com> <1991Nov15.160741.5495@husc3.harvard.edu> <JMC.91Nov17135110@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <1991Nov17.190935.5546@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Nov20.214001.2910@vax.oxford.ac.uk>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 21

In article <1991Nov20.214001.2910@vax.oxford.ac.uk> mc703@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:
>My personal opinion is that anything Mikhail would recognize as semantics :-)
>is going to be a bad theory of language, let alone thought in general.  I
>recall reading some stuff by Kripke (Locke Lectures at Oxford University in
>the late 70s) in which he gives various reasons why the Russellian treatment
>of, for example, definite descriptions, is not sufficient for real language:
>what does Mikhail think of Kripke?

When it came up before, Mikhail thought Kripke had failed to 
understand Frege, that Kripke's criticism of Frege's position
therefore failed, and that Frege was right.  (How much of that
would apply to Russell I can't say.)

I think that Kripke may well misunderstood Frege but that he's
made a number of significant points nonetheless.  Since most,
and perhaps all, speakers of a language can be mistaken about
what description is correct, if descriptions (or sense) can
nonetheless fix reference it looks like it has to do so in a
somewhat mysterious way.

-- jd


